GLORYING IN OUR INFIRMITIES

A SERMON FOR SEXAGESIMA SUNDAY

Today, Sexagesima Sunday, is the second Sunday in Shrovetide and the Second Sunday before Lent.  Tomorrow marks the half-way point in this very short season of Shrovetide, so there isn’t much time left for you to shrive yourselves, to present yourself to the priest for confession, penance and absolution, in preparation for Lent.  God does not expect us to suddenly drop all those comfortable and innocent little pleasures of life the second we hear the midnight chimes of Ash Wednesday.  But he does expect you to use the opportunity the Church puts before us to prepare for that time, to restore ourselves if necessary to the state of grace, that we may more effectively persevere in whatever penances we intend to make.  New Year gave us the experience that resolutions are not always well kept, but with the grace of God, we can do all things.  Let’s make sure we have the grace of God within us, and that we keep it through the Lenten season.

Set before us in today’s Epistle, almost in glowing technicolor, is St. Paul’s great autobiographical description of his own penance-filled life.  And what a terrible tale it is, terrible yet inspiring.  We can’t hope to compare our tiny offerings of self-sacrifice that we put ourselves through for a few weeks of Lent to what St. Paul suffered—being scourged not once but five times, being beaten with rods three times, being stoned once, shipwrecked three times, and so it goes on!  Have you been scourged or shipwrecked lately? Let’s not pat ourselves on the back because we stop putting sugar in our coffee!  It is fitting that this story of St. Paul’s tribulations is placed before us just before Lent.  If you read it carefully, you will find all the inspiration you need to make a good Lent.

Speaking of “glowing technicolor,” news is coming out of a new movie from Hollywood about the life of St. Paul.  I don’t trust Hollywood to make an authentic biblical movie these days, but I am encouraged by the fact that in the movie, St. Luke is played by Jim Caviezel, the actor who of course played the role of our Lord in Mel Gibson’s famous film of the Passion.  Mr. Caviezel, from all accounts, is a good man, and in his own words, claims that he has refused many biblical roles since The Passion because they are not true to the Holy Scriptures.  That he has accepted the role of St. Luke in this upcoming movie is a point in its favor therefore.  I haven’t seen the movie yet—it isn’t being released until March 28, just a couple of days before Good Friday.  But I did get the impression from the trailer that for a Hollywood blockbuster it might be surprisingly uplifting.  Don’t blame me if it isn’t, but let’s keep an open mind for now.

The examples of the saints are before us every day in the Church’s calendar.  We would do well to take more than a cursory glance at their lives, giving instead a long hard look at the sufferings each one went through.  The big picture is this—there’s no sainthood without suffering.  The older we get the more we realize it.  Very few of us there are who do not know sorrow in our lives.  Ask yourselves, do I? 

Most people, I’m sure, can answer with a very solid “Yes!”  Some of them may do so with a great deal of whining and self-pity, and the better ones among us, hopefully, with gratitude to our merciful God who has given us such opportunities to follow in his Son’s footsteps and merit our eternal reward.

If we look towards the world for a moment, and to those other people, the world’s “happy people”, very often they seem to have found joy by losing God.  They find a whole different kind of God in the constant gratification of their every whim.  They can afford it; they have plenty of money, beautiful houses, good looks and charm, intelligence, talent…  But let’s remember the final end of these men and women.  Let’s remember that God is a merciful God and sometimes gives people happiness in this life, knowing that in the next they will have none.  Are we such “happy people?”  We should pray that we may never be damned with such happiness!

And then there are others, (should we call them the “fortunate few”?) who don’t seem to know what it is to suffer.  They are truly “happy people,” forever bestowing the sweet smile of kindness on all they meet.  I’d be willing to wager, mind you, that those smiles are hiding a life every bit as hard as the ones the rest of us complain about so readily… What is their secret?  Let’s turn again to St. Paul for the answer. He’s quite clear on the subject, and spells it out for us after telling us of all the bad things he has had to endure.  He points out that he is telling us all about his terrible sufferings not to boast: “It is not expedient for me doubtless to glory.”  But, he says, “if I must needs glory, I will glory of the things which concern mine infirmities.”

This is the key to understanding the false happiness of the rich and powerful, and the true happiness that the rest of us have the opportunity to enjoy, if only we would embrace our infirmities, whatever they may be.  For it is by those infirmities that we will reach our final goal.  If we finally attain to heaven, it will be in spite of our money, in spite of our good looks, our intelligence, our fine houses and beautiful clothes, and success in this world.  If we make it to heaven, it will be because if we have any of these things, we have used them according to God’s will, and not to satisfy any ill-chosen quest for happiness in this life.  

All these apparently good things are indeed good, providing they are used for the purpose God gave them to us.  They are good, but they are dangerous.  Dangerous because they lure us into seeing them as tools to satiate our never-ending appetites in this life.  This is why our Lord warned that it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven.  The same warning could equally have been made about beauty, intelligence or any other of the talents God gave us. They are gifts from God.  Do we abuse them?  Or do we dedicate them to the service of God? 

Lent is our big opportunity to re-focus on this thought.  We should want to freely give up, as a penance, some of those gifts that God has given us.  Or better yet, let’s put them to the service of God instead of our own service.  All those little things we enjoy, is there any way we can re-focus them on a higher, more spiritual and more meritorious objective?  If we look hard enough, we’ll find a way to succeed in this.  “Seek and ye shall find.”  And ironically, by giving up our perceived happiness in our own pleasures, we shall find true happiness in the things of God, and in the knowledge that God returns “an hundredfold” the little gifts of self we give to him.